misnomer
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: Sequel to stand in heart. [two weeks later] [akuroku] Roxas is experiencing the echos of love and memories from the heart he tried to steal, a heart that seems to remember Axel, or someone like him, in torturous detail.


misnomer

part one

flamer

There was a reason he always smelt of smoke, why he glimpsed and imagined the orange glow an ember whenever they embraced and briefly shut their eyes—why the tips of his fingers were often like the kisses of an oven when they brushed along his knuckles. And, with a smile that seemed to be carved for a much wider face, he often presented his fire-birthed creation, with a little white rose poking forth.

He liked to watch him as he bent in front of the kiln and spun sand and heat into wine glass, red glass, shimmering yellow and green glass. Not that he was allowed to at all. The redhead claimed his presence was too distracting, that it ruined his work too often. Standing, arriving a few minutes early to the class to pick him up, he would steal time instead, watching his boyfriend with an unstoppable grin.

He wore a chocolate leather apron, tied tight around his waist and bowed at the nape of his neck, a thick solidity against the erratic color and stripe and tear of his clothes. The shock of cherry red hair, normally loose around his face with the wildest gentle wave and sweeping across his forehead, pulled back into a messy lump of flame. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a flick of his bony wrist, then wrapped it back around the long black shaft, upon the end iridescent glass blossoming in the intense heat. Concentration liked to crease his brow, smartening the dark marks beneath his eyes, sharpening the lines of his face, the jaunt of his jaw.

He was oddly beautiful, in a greasy, too-skinny, gangly way, his colors more vibrant than any word could summarize or any light could do justice. That's why he always saw orange and red and other fires he could not pinpoint when they bent together, (Lae) grinning and puffing out a remark with his breath heavy with work and happy frustration—

—

Roxas shook his head, then sighed and fell backwards onto the bed that would see no rest. No amount of mental force, nothing could drive these thoughts that flashed through Roxas's soul whenever he would pause too long, whenever internal darkness would flicker and give into hazy memory. Misty, half-golden things, haunting without relief and without malice, but damaging all the same. Heartless as he was, he still needed to sleep.

But in dreams, the memories were even worse. These memories that were not his, but somebody's—and they were playing hard and strong, crying out to live again. He would wake in the still of night, bent and hollowed by ancient lust, wrenched by gasps of emotion that were only dampened by the passage of time, and ready to vomit. So, steeling himself against his exhaustion and his own, treacherous mind, Roxas finally peeled himself off his bed and slipped into his clothes in the quiet of night.

There was always one person who never slept in the castle, as well.

And, as much as his body flowed with the blood of a foreigner, as much irritation he was sure to receive for seeking him out, Axel might smooth things out. That bone-crunching grin seems to sap everything from him. Maybe it could smear these memories, persistent like disease, and convince him that that flaming tone of hair was not too familiar to him. He'd know if he just saw him again.

(…he'd know if he had ever once been oddly beautiful in a jacket of grease and christened by fire…)

So he put his boots to the side and walked barefoot out into the darkness of the World That Never Was, with a soul of memories that never were (his), either.

Axel greets him with no response, the simple lack of action that means he's welcome to join him, when he walks into the emptied bar and claims the red stool beside him. The lights are hollow and monotonous, blue-white, gray, and shadow-dark. Like a half-washed black and white film. In this film, the Flame is the only splash of color, a burning comet's kiss of hair perched on a warm-skinned face, slashed with dark.

His fingers are worrying at the glass edges of a glass, gently spinning it and letting the low lights catch at every whisky-colored turn. It's the sweet smell that lets Roxas know it's not really alcohol—and, with a slight smirk, it seems to suit him. No words are exchanged for a good while, until all the shadowy figures that had populated the blurred edges of the room dissipate and wander off, nightmares loosed on a dreaming world. By then, Roxas has cradled his face in his palm and lost his thoughts in the shine of the assorted bottles against the wall—amber, red, and white.

Axel finally turns to look at him, abandoning his contemplation and shoving the glass away with just his fingertips. Lids rimmed with dark liner sink heavily over his glassy-green eyes, not drunk, but wishing he were. Finally acknowledging Roxas, he only dredges up his voice to ask, "What'chu want?"

"Nothing." Roxas doesn't know if that's a lie or truth when he pauses to consider his response, but simply shrugs it away. He reaches for someone's emptied glass before him and thumbs away a bead of liquid.

"Nuthin. Nuthin, he says."

Roxas turns to meet the half-there stare, his face hollowing with skepticism. "You're not drunk," he scolds Axel, forcing away a long pang when he peers into those eyes the color of life's first, abundant breath.

Inside, someone gasps and preens, screaming in a ghost's voice to reach out and touch him, he's being too dramatic—he needs (to be touched, he wants to be touched—)

Which Roxas ignores again.

"Yeah. I know. So, what's up, Blondie?" Axel asks, drilling his stare into Roxas. It's never easy to coax conversation from him that is not bitter or horribly brief. As he does so, Roxas feels the memories that are not his bubble back up, like deep-buried water heated by his internal flame.

Every inch of him is fire, in every moment, burning, flickering, sputtering. A wet fingertip away from being snuffed out, but hot, strong, red. The stark green of his eyes glows ember bright, his eyes are smeared with charcoal black, his mouth changeable and volatile as the edges of flame. His body is gaunt, like a kill stretched over a campfire, and his voice smoky and dancing. And—as the memories remind him—every inch of skin is unbearably hot to the touch, but necessary to keep from death by cold.

"Oi, Roxas!" Axel's fingers snapping in front of his face quickly snuff the images, which had quickly descended into much more lurid detail of the fire allegory. When he blinks in confusion in return, the fire-starter scoffs and twists his neck. "What the hell you doing here if you didn't come to pay attention to me?"

Roxas has an answer for that, and it doesn't involve having to think of the naked body that looks an awful lot like his partner flashing in his false memory. "Not everything is about you," he says.

Axel wrenches his entire face into an expression of extreme skepticism. "So you just _happen_ to wander two miles from headquarters in the dead of the night, just _happen_ to stroll into the one dive where I sit, just _happen _to sit right the hell next to me? Roxas, you have to admit, that story would be more convincing if you sat, say, two seats away. _That_ would be coincidental."

"Shut up." Roxas sighs and shoves his face into the folds of his elbow. "Just shut up for once, would you?"

"What? What the hell did you come here, then?"

Roxas wants to peel his tattoos off his face. That would get the point across.

Also because, when he closed his eyes to escape the images of the Axel-look-a-like leaning in for a kiss that his face incites, he can feel someone's fingertips tracing the damn things with so much warmth and suppressed lust it hurts.

With a groan he converts into an angry scoff, Roxas shakes his head, deciding he should go. This is not working. Axel is only worsening these memories, drawing them out, encouraging them. These lies seem only to feed on his presence, remembering themselves a little more clearly the longer his voice of fire lilts around him.

"What's not working?" Axel snaps at him.

Roxas is too tired to care he's slipping. He's also too tired to care if that tone of voice means he's at the edge of spontaneously bursting in to flame and smacking some manners into him—he (Lae) always did that when he came home too late, lighting two cigarettes in his mouth at once, getting ready for a quarrel—

"Whatever." It's weak, but it buys him enough time to slip out of the bar without Axel immediately following him.

Roxas rubs furiously at his forehead all the way home, and the scars from the stand-in heart Axel had pulled from his chest only a few weeks before burns again. And the memories come again.

And this time, they are of a bone-thin head of red hair moaning into someone's neck.

_Goddamn it._


End file.
